Once in a while, particularly if it's early and you've been reasonably successful lately (and you didn't spend all day there), you have to chalk up a game like Sunday's as a mama-said.

Mama said there'd be days like this. There'd be days when a promising first-inning rally would be short-circuited by a crafty veteran pitcher -- a crafty right-hander, yet -- and even though you've scored three runs, you can sense they won't be enough because you had the bases loaded and nobody out and you have Victor Zambrano who was lucky to give up only three runs in his half of the inning. Everything that followed, while disappointing, didn't seem surprising.

I don't have a particular game in mind, but I know I've seen yesterday's scenario unfold at least a couple of times a year every year for the past 36 years. They say if you watch baseball enough, you'll see something you've never seen before, but I'm pretty sure I'd seen that first inning end with a strikeout and a double play and I know I've seen the inevitable tail-off between the second and the ninth that made the whole thing seem futile to start with.

But I don't think I'd ever seen what I saw as the bottom of the first played out. First and second, nobody out, and Carlos, the third-place hitter, bunts for a base hit. It goes foul. He bunts again and this time gets on.

Your designated RBI man bunting in that spot is unusual enough. I was listening on the radio and neither Gary nor Howie questioned it. Since neither Ralph Kiner nor Tim McCarver, men who believe No. 3 hitters should act like it, was doing the game, I figure it's unlikely anybody on TV made a big deal out of it. Yet I'm sure Beltran was doing something unprecedented in these parts.

No, not passing off the opportunity to drive in a run. Beltran's fast enough to beat out a bunt. The third baseman was giving it to him. Loading the bases with nobody out in the first is a fine thing. What I don't think I've seen -- and I don't even know that it occurred -- is the reasoning I believe Carlos employed.

Click back to Saturday, the game marked as the signal of the Piazza decline. That was when Beltran was intentionally walked so Mike could be faced. And Mike didn't produce. Click back to Sunday and what Carlos Beltran did.

I didn't hear it commented upon. I haven't read anything today. And I haven't spoken to Mr. Beltran (who for some reason hasn't sent me his cell number). But I got the very strong sense that Carlos was saying to his cleanup hitter, "Yo, Mike: you got this...you the man." In much the same way that he took the kids to Gold's Gym in spring training, Carlos was being the leader of the New Mets by pumping up the old lion, the guy we're going to need if we're going to do anything at all in 2005. And Mike, in his own mind and my imagination, said, "dude..." and stroked that three-run double.

If that's what happened, especially if it's something that can be fingered from the vantage point of October, then yesterday was a day like few others.

Yecch. What a mess. Not many observations about the game itself: It was one of those you're glad to see end. I was relieved that apparently wasn't Willie ordering up Kaz's singularly stupid sacrifice bunt with nobody out and runners on first and second in the second -- guess sabermetrics hasn't hit Japan yet, either. And I don't think I've ever seen that many hit batsmen in a game that was basically tension-free: It was like everybody knew nobody had too firm a handle on this whole pitching thing.

I went to the game with a bunch of friends, several of whom had never seen Shea before, or had blocked out long-ago memories of it. It was interesting to see their reactions. A woman who's basically seen nothing but Fenway was impressed by the relative newness of things and the lack of bad seats. (We were in a upper-deck box behind home.) She did look somewhat alarmed when the upper deck began flexing during the brief spell of Met-fan happiness following Piazza's double, and asked worriedly if this was the stadium that things had fallen off of, or if that was Yankee Stadium. I assured her that things fell off Shea all the time, adding gravely that it used to have two more decks. The look of horror as she felt the upper deck continuing to sway was worth my ticket.

Still, two things made me wonder if we hadn't found our way to some alternate Shea. First a friend of mine figured out, about ten minutes after the fact, that the beer vendor had given her change from a $10 instead of the $20 she'd given him. Forget it, I told her, you have no shot. She returned a minute later with her extra $10. Wha? Then, leaving the game, we were intercepted by the orange netting at the street exit. My pals sputtered in disbelief; I just nodded sagely and offered a theatrical sigh. Whereupon one of my friends asked the cop holding one end of the net (he was about 14, by the way) if we could get through. "We don't want to cross the street, we want to go left," she said -- exactly the kind of perfectly reasonable thing you and I and many other folks have said innumerable times at Shea over the years, only to be reminded that the rules of Planet Earth don't necessarily apply in Flushing.

"You're going left? Why, that'll be fine," the 14-year-old cop said with a broad smile, sweeping the net aside like a proud maitre d'. And so off the merry band of visitors went to the 7, with me stumbling along behind in amazement.

Postscript: After Cliff Floyd was brushed back by Livan Hernandez and got up to rifle a single up the middle, the scoreboard operators triumphantly fired up the celebratory cartoon for Mike Cameron. Given the afternoon's other surprises, that was kind of reassuring.